Instrumental

Three hundred years ago, this English double-barreled air pump on a walnut stand was high tech and essential for its inventor's seminal work, Francis Hauksbee's Physico-Mechanical Experiments. It joins resonators, astrolabes, the earliest microscopes and scores of other devices, as elegant as they were revolutionary, in Gerard L'E. Turner's delightful testament to human ingenuity, Scientific Instruments 1500–1900: An Introduction (University of California, $138).